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Tennis umpire Lois Goodman not having an affair, attorney says

August 30, 2012 | 9:31
am

An attorney for tennis umpire Lois Goodman, who is charged with stabbing her 80-year-old husband to death with a broken coffee mug, says police have falsely suggested in search warrants that her client was having a relationship with another man.

In a search warrant, a Los Angeles police detective said Goodman, married to Alan Goodman for nearly 50 years, was communicating on the Internet with another man. One email included cryptic remarks about her "terminating a relationship" and having "alternative sleeping arrangements," though exactly what she meant remains unclear.

But Lois Goodman's attorney, Alison Triessl, angrily denounced the information in the warrant as false and a way to dig up dirt on her client, a woman without a criminal record who is revered in the tennis community.

It is "absolutely, categorically not true," Triessl said. She said police have interviewed the man in question and know they are not having an affair.

Goodman on Wednesday pleaded not guilty to the April 17 killing of her husband in the couple's Woodland Hills condominium. Prosecutor Sharon Ransom in court alleged the killing was premeditated and that Goodman, 70, wielded the broken coffee cup as an "improvised knife" and left her husband to die in his bed as she went to "tennis and to get her nails done."

Court commissioner Mitchell Block reduced her bail from $1 million to $500,000, citing her age, lack of criminal record and ties to the community. If she is released from custody, Block ordered Goodman to remain on home electronic monitoring.

Triessl maintains that Goodman is too weak and physically incapable of committing the crime. She noted in a court motion that Goodman has two bad knees, a replaced left shoulder, a torn rotator cuff, rheumatoid arthritis and "back pain that requires pain-blocking sent from an implanted device."

Goodman has told police that she came home and found her husband dead in bed. She said she believed he crawled there after falling down the stairs.

Triessl said Goodman's family "maintains their mother did not do this."